Things I Love

I love David Letterman. He’s such a great comic! He’s cynical and yet not too harsh, a smartass and yet he doesn’t shoot to kill. He’s the perfect mix. AND he was in Cabin Boy selling sock monkeys as a dirty old sea captain. Awesome.

I also love my Sebastian. Today we took turns listening to each other’s hearts. I asked him what mine sounds like and he said “the monster”. I listened to his and narrated the “bump boom bump boom” sound for a while. He kept asking to hear again, and asking me to listen to his. It was so sweet and precious -I know that I would die if I couldn’t listen to that little heart beating someday. Ever since his birth I’ve been so much more aware, so much more sensitive to harm. Watching this war, and the shit on the news -seeing children his age with limbs blown to pieces or being carried limp through the streets by wailing adults… I can’t bear it sometimes. I cry for those children, for their parents.

Everyone’s arguing about something these days, it seems. The draft, the taxes, the local park district -even the integration of spanish language into American life. Why can’t people just realize that the world outside of our awareness is no less real just because we aren’t a part of it? I think the draft is a horrible idea, and I’ve heard that it failed early. It would be horrible for our own people to be forced into submission to go and “liberate” other countries.

I guess I just can’t fix this conflict within. Knowing that those people don’t probably want us there -so we destroyed a regime that had made their lives hard: are we making them better by staying there longer? I know death is the eventual result of life. Birth is the leading cause of death, I’ve read, but it just sucks to know that while I labor away to achieve my dreams here, other parents are watching their children get wounded or worse yet, buried.

So I hug Sebastian and listen to his heart, and I savor every moment we have together.